{"id":22321,"date":"2019-12-09T11:06:43","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T16:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordontennis.com\/?p=22321"},"modified":"2020-04-11T15:38:05","modified_gmt":"2020-04-11T19:38:05","slug":"ten-terrific-things-about-tennis-in-the-2010s-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2019\/12\/09\/ten-terrific-things-about-tennis-in-the-2010s-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten Terrific Things About Tennis In The 2010s: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a four-part series<\/a> to end the 2019 season, Martin Keady, our resident tennis historian, looks back not just at the last year but at the last decade in tennis. This week, he examines ten highlights from tennis in the 2010s.<\/em><\/p>\n

The 2010s can be viewed as the second part of the true Golden Age of Tennis, especially men\u2019s tennis, that has essentially been the story of the world\u2019s greatest individual sport in the first 20 years of the 21st<\/sup> century. If the noughties saw the beginning of the greatest rivalry in the history of the game and arguably the greatest rivalry in any sport ever, between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, then from 2010 onwards that rivalry became the \u201cTrivalry\u201d, as Novak Djokovic muscled his way in on the act and actually ended up upstaging his two supposed superiors for most of the decade.<\/p>\n

In the women\u2019s game, the 2010s were largely the story of Serena, as the younger Williams sister first fully emerged from the shadow of her older sister, Venus, which had seemed to hang over her for much of the previous ten years, before experiencing a dramatic slump at the end of the decade (perhaps not coincidentally after giving birth for the first time) and losing four Major Finals in a row. As a result, her dominance of women\u2019s tennis has now given way to a kind of glorious free-for-all in which there are multiple female Major winners and, as yet, no dominant women\u2019s world No.1 to replace her.<\/p>\n

Here, then, are the first 5 of the 10 terrific things about tennis in the 2010s.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Emergence At The End of the Decade of Stefanos Tsitsipas and Jannik Sinner<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Such has been the complete domination of the men\u2019s Majors by The Big Three of Roger, Rafa and Novak (the last man besides them to win a Major was Stan Wawrinka at the US Open in 2016) that towards the end of the decade there had been much talk about tennis, especially men\u2019s tennis, becoming \u201can old man\u2019s game\u201d, or even a gerontocracy, where the old ruled over the young seemingly in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

    That was why the end to the men\u2019s season in 2019 was so refreshing and potentially so historic. First, Jannik Sinner came from seemingly nowhere (or at least the granting of a wild card) to win the NextGen Finals in Milan, in the process demonstrating both staggering hitting power and a Zen-like composure that completely belied his 18 years. Then, Stefanos Tsitsipas, who is only three years older than Sinner and had won the NextGen Finals himself in 2018, won the ATP Finals in London to announce himself as a possible Major-winner in 2020.<\/p>\n